Scroogle - a not-for-profit search engine that offered users something of a pro-privacy antidote to Google - has been killed off by its creator.
Daniel Brandt called it quits after his servers were repeatedly targeted by DDoS attacks on Scroogle.
As we reported last week, the website was out of action and displaying a message …

Re: Re: Well ...

Re: Well ...

That'd be a false assumption.

Brandt is a frothing nut who believes Google is "out to get him", who thought the CIA was "spying" on him because ... its site uses cookies, and who stalks and harasses people, trying to expose and smear them to shut them up. Most notably, he spent several years constantly attacking Wikipedia and its contributors, claiming it should "display everything it knows" about them on the one hand, whilst he hypocritically campaigned for better privacy on the other.

Mostly he's just a mentally unbalanced attention-seeker with an axe to grind against Google, for no better reason than personal vanity, because his name and site didn't feature highly in Google's search results.

http://www.google-watch-watch.org/pagerank.php

I'm all for privacy and anonymization services, indeed I use them all the time, but Brant himself was just an extremely obnoxious and malicious loony-bin with a hypocritical agenda.

Re: Dang

Re: Dang

Wtf

Who would want to attack Scroogle ? Dammit anyway, I've been using it for several years now and have been using DDG for the past few weeks due to access difficulties, but it will be sorely missed. Many thanks for the good work lads, much appreciated. Anonymous, just because.

"Scroogle - a not-for-profit search engine that offered users something of a pro-privacy antidote to Google - has been killed off by its creator."

It wasn't a not-for-profit search engine, it was a search engine proxy - there is a difference.

Not that I'm belittling Brandt or the people who use it - I'm all for privacy and tools that help with that goal, used it a few times myself. I just think calling it a search engine is a little bit of a stretch.

Google's PR could easily explain to the average punter how Scroogle is copying their results and displaying as its own, in such a way Scroogle looks bad and Google looks like the victim. In fact since it's kind of true, it wouldn't even be hard to do!

Not to mention of course

that Google probably don't want the powers that be or public opinion coming up with a verdict on 'their' results, given that this largely means extracts of other people's content. It's a grey area at best.

@AC 17:41 - Yes I still think that.

The same way that taking a Microsoft service and offering it in a modified form is immoral and illegal at the same time (remember the web site who was downloading and repackaging Windows updates/patches for you).

Feel free to hate Google but if users don't like Google search service they can easily move to other search provider with better privacy policies.

I find that for an evil company Google was extremely generous with Scroogle.

Re: Not to mention of course

Not at all, my friend. If you do some research you will be surprised to discover that Google and Yahoo for that matter have detailed instructions on how to prevent your web site form being displayed in their search results, and also how to remove all the information already present. You're free to stay out of Google search if you want it.

Stealing from someone and then claiming the moral highground is absurd. If someone wants to create their own search engine and provide all the servers to run it, advert and tracking free, THEY can claim the kudos.

Passing Google's service off as your own is no different as using your neighbour's WiFi so your ISP can't see what you're doing... it's just plain wrong.

"Different as"?

@Passing Google's service off as your own

is exactly not what Scroogle did. They were very clear, they told users they scraped Google and stripped out the sponsored and google suggested sites. They prevented Google keeping data on their users and targeting crap at them.

Your comparison with logging on to your naighbour's wifi is false. You're just plain wrong.

Re: Bah!

Sad to see it go

Especially with all the latest 'enhancements' to Google search, Scroogle was the only thing that made Google usable to me. I am now trying out DuckDuckGo which provides options to remove all the crap and simply show me the search results... what I originally started using Google for and what I still want from a search engine. This has nothing to do with stealing Google's search results and everything to do with having a simple and efficient user interface, something Google sadly doesn't offer any more. I would be happy to pay Google for this service if they offered it.

As an alternative try ...

https://privatelee.qrobe.it/

Search engine with no adds or tracking. Duck does have ads, cookies and has it's servers with Amazon.

Who knows what really happened to Scroogle. Wierd thing at one stage was some crazy redirect to domain name site type thingy with chinese characters. Google probably aren't that bothered, most people give little thought to searching through google or using security add-ons.

Steve Mann knows what he's talking about... Ha ha He he. What a cheddar. Although +1 for the use of the word "Scrapage" ;-)

RIP Scroogle your death was inevitable. Maybe someone could make a collection of your cartoons!! That would be good ;-)

DuckDuckGo gives great search

DuckDuckGo (DDG) seems to be the most secure and private search engine/metasearch consolidator. It is by far the most customizable. Read the man pages, check (or uncheck) the boxes, and use the "Add to Search Bar" plugin to search in the manner to which you'll soon become accustomed. Don't forget SSL (put https://duckduckgo.com/ in the address bar)! DDG is also a "Tor exit enclave," which can make your searches even more secure. DDG does *not* scrape Google, at least directly. DDG also has a simple HTML version--no Javascript required.

Privatelee used to be called Qrobe and, confusingly, still can be, (I don't think there is a difference.) They scrape Google, Bing, and Ask and play well with SSL. Configuration options are minimal, but you can "Add to Search Bar" to get the SSL version and turn off the annoying "Web Of Trust."

Ixquick is another partly-European-based metasearch engine which claims to provide ultimate privacy. Considerable customizing is possible. So is SSL. Ixquick also can serve as an SSL proxy for sooper-sekrit roque state overthrows and/or the downloading of juicy porn without defiling the eyeballs of FBI agents.

Try them all, settle on one, and use the other two when you're not getting what you wanted with the one you chose.

Google "results"

I used Scroogle because my searches weren't tracked.

Prior to that, I used Google; but made sure that it was searching for "random" stuff a lot more often than my genuine searches. What people search for in the commercial arena may be related to what they do in confidence. Aggregation of search strings provides the intelligence to indicate the direction of such activity. The objective may be to place targeted adverts alongside the search results, but the uses of the collected data go far beyond that purpose.

From what I've seen, a great many people use Google when it's not needed. They type the url of the web site that they want into the Google search text. Then they click on the first match. (Yikes and Yikes!) Many refuse to be educated as to the "address bar" in their browser window..

Bad? Much worse.

Some prominent blogs frequently use a Google search URL with embeded URL for the real site. Bloggers already have the ability to collect statistics about which links are clicked from their site and have the REFERER information to tell them how some users got to their blog.

Re: Re: 'hilarious paranoia' and Google

Look JDX, the NSA recently moved to the best practice/best available techniques model of assuming all their networks are compromised.

In fairness, I reciprocally assume that all my tools/websites/everything-internetty are compromised by god-knows-who; I have talked to members of the ILETS group about it!

I personally run the FF/Mozilla+Chrome 'track me not' plug-in from the NYuniversity http://www.cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/ I don't *need* to run it , but I choose to do so, the 'hilarious' attitude on the other hand will actually kill people

Re: Re: Google "results"

>>That's paranoia of the most hilarious type.

JDX is right, but probably for a different reason. Everything is being logged and stored by ISPs, so it's not that paranoid to think one day in the future the plod will set their sights on you, and trawl through your searches to add a few extraneous charges for leverage. Any number of harmless searches, such as home DIY or health concerns could probably be mangled into a pattern of terrorism or sexual deviance.

However, it is silly to think a few extra searches would throw anyone off. If a computer can beat you at chess, it can tell that a search for "purple monkey dishwasher" immediately after "brazilian fart fetish" is probably subterfuge. You'd need to generate millions of queries to stand a chance at deceiving anyone.

Re: Re: Re: Google "results"

A) is almost impossible due to the many and various levels where the monitoring is performed: DPI boxes, telecom switches, IMP/CCDP. Bypassing DPI et al will surely be illegal somewhere/sometime.

B) as you say is 'silly' - we have limited dilution tools- but it is the only legal alternative to profiling by persons/enterprises with an unclear agenda. remember that the for example Amesys massive interception tools can find a keyword in a whole year of internet communications data.

the entropy/randomness is far from perfect - but it will do for the moment, I'm not trying to be illegal but "trying to inject reasonable doubt in everyone’s queries" for this we may need massed FPGA random search or random datagram generators to fight back against massive interception, should that be the only way to proceed, thanks for your encouragement!

Javascript

I have a feeling Google are working on changes that will break browsers that don't enable Javascript, and thus use Google's over-fancy AJAX interface.

For a few days now, I've been intermittently getting search results that have no link to the pages of the results. The description is there, along with the links to the cached page and the and 'similar' search, but the link at the top of each result in the larger text that goes to the actual page, and the printed URL at the bottom are missing. Enabling Javascript makes everything work, but in that annoying AJAX way.

Google usually test things like this randomly on some users before rolling it out.

God, I hate the way it just searches every time I type another character. When I start using the arrow keys to edit my search terms, it slows the computer right down as it's constantly searching incomplete, half-edited terms in the background before I've finished amending what's in the box.

I know you can disable it if you go into Google's settings page, but as my browser wipes cookies on exit, and I run C-Cleaner to wipe Flash cookies when I boot, that setting gets lost. If these changes are targeting dumb lusers, why not let them opt in, knowing they'll never want to wipe their cookies, "whatever a cookie is".

But Google say the majority of retards using the Internet find it faster by benchmark amounts. Yet again, we all have to go at the pace of the slowest ship.